Trump failure to lead on climate doesn’t faze UN policymakers in Bonn

Policymakers from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Bonn this week for climate change talks aimed at fulfilling the promise of the Paris Agreement. U.S. negotiators will be there too, despite President Trump’s denial of climate change and his signaled alliance with the fossil fuel industry.

Under President Obama, the U.S. played a key leadership role in climate negotiations, bringing China fully on board, and helping broker the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. President Trump has threatened to withdraw from the pact — a four-year process — and claims he will make a final decision this month. It seems likely China would step into the leadership gap left by the U.S.

Bonn negotiators remain unfazed by Trump’s climate change denialism or his threat to withdraw from Paris. Every signatory nation is going forward with meeting voluntary carbon reduction pledges. Some policymakers do worry how the parties to the Paris Agreement will make up the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. climate aid promised under Obama, but now denied by Trump.

The feeling among Bonn participants is that the rest of the world will go forward briskly and effectively in combatting climate change by embracing alternative energy solutions that will bring jobs and prosperity to their countries, while the U.S. will play the role of a rogue nation that will share no part in the resulting economic boon.

The opening session in Bonn 2016, as seen here, will look very much the same this week as policymakers of nearly 200 nations, including the U.S., convene for speeches in the main hall before heading off to hammer out the guidelines by which the Paris Agreement will be implemented. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its internal debate whether or not to renege on the Paris commitment made by the United States under President Obama. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Kaisa Kosonen, a political advisor on climate action for Greenpeace in Germany is prepping for the mid-year United Nations climate conference in Bonn, running May 8-18. But she pauses to answer my question. Here’s the set up, I say:

Under President Obama, the U.S. played the lead role in global climate negotiations since 2014, drawing China into the fold, while pushing for the historic Paris Agreement in 2015, when 196 nations pledged to reduce their carbon footprint. Under President Trump, U.S. leadership is waning, or could become oppositional, as the president allies himself with the fossil fuel industry and threatens withdrawal from Paris. China, meanwhile, looks poised to step into the leadership vacuum. — How concerned are you?

Kosonen responds: “Obviously, we need the U.S. to engage actively in solving this problem [of global warming]. And that’s what a clear majority of Americans want, too, across party lines. But it doesn’t seem like Trump will listen to his people, his top scientists or even American business,” which has lobbied loudly for the U.S. to stay in the Paris Agreement, as have some Republican lawmakers.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry signs the Paris Climate Change Agreement at the UN on Earth Day, 2016. The U.S. is bound by international law to abide by the agreement. Under its conditions, it would take President Trump four years to legally withdraw. Trump says he will make a decision by the end of May, with high level administration meetings scheduled this Tuesday to discuss Paris. Photo courtesy of US State Department.

Then, as if running out from under a cloud of gloom, Kosonen sums up the consensus of nearly a dozen Bonn participants I interviewed for this story:

“If the U.S. walks out, almost 200 countries and 87 percent of global emissions would still be [regulated under the agreement]. And I have not heard any country yet suggesting that if the U.S. is out, they’ll be out, too. Or that they’d roll back their climate action. On the contrary, the global transition to clean energy will continue with or without the U.S. because it is embedded in economic, social and technological trends that are bigger than any one country.”

Sara Shaw concurs; the international program coordinator for Climate and Justice with Friends of the Earth International in London says that, “The rest of the world cannot let the U.S. drag them down; they must take immediate climate action without the United States. Global leaders should also use every economic and political pressure available to them, to force Trump to take the U.S.’s fair share of climate action.”

In fact, Trump’s victory and his tweets calling climate change a hoax seemed to galvanize world leaders and climate activists, not divide them, as had happened with the election of George W. Bush in 2000 and his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the 2016 mid-year UN climate conference in Bonn, participants were greeted by a triumphant photo taken after the signing of the historic Paris Agreement in December 2015. The United States is currently the only country considering backing out of the agreement. Photo by Justin Catanoso

“The answer to the question of whether [Trump’s climate stance] creates a difficult backdrop for negotiations is clearly, yes,” says Paula Caballero, global director of climate programs for the World Resources Institute (WRI). “As a former negotiator, I know that this is not the first time that the climate negotiations have faced difficulties. Yet countries have always plowed ahead through difficult times.”

In Bonn this week, negotiators will have little time for Trump’s tweets as they settle into nitty gritty policymaking efforts to create a rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, to be completed by late 2018. Global temperatures have already risen 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880; the goal of Paris is to keep temperatures well under another 1 degree Celsius by 2100. And that — as scientists and other experts have warned again and again — will be a very tall order.

To achieve that goal and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of global warming will require even more ambitious carbon-reduction goals than those voluntary promises made in Paris. It will also require greater transparency in measuring emissions, plus billions of dollars to preserve forests as carbon sinks, and to help vulnerable nations adapt to escalating drought, sea-level rise and extreme weather.

Trump has said he intends to decide by month’s end whether to start the four-year process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and his advisors will meet this Tuesday for high-level meetings to discuss the fate of U.S. involvement in the pact.

Still, a delegation of U.S. negotiators from the State Department is expected in Bonn, though the position of special envoy, the U.S. chief negotiator, has been left vacant by Trump. Instead, the delegation will be led by career Department of State staffer Trigg Talley, who remains — at least for now — the deputy special envoy for climate change, as he was under Obama and Bush.

A wildfire in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana. Last year, wildfires burned Fort McMurray in Canada, a tar sands oil support city; and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a tourist town. As the world warms, wildfires are likely to greatly worsen, especially in the U.S., say scientists. Photo by John McColgan, Edited by Fir0002 courtesy of the USDAArctic melt ponds. The Arctic is currently seeing record lows in ice volume for this time of year; many experts fear that 2017 could see a crash in Arctic ice extent and volume by mid-September, with unknown destabilizing impacts on the world’s weather. Photo courtesy of NOAA

The U.S. will be sending a “much smaller” delegation than in the past, according to an unnamed State Department official, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, and it will be focused on ensuring that no decisions are made in Bonn “that would prejudice our future policy,” undermine competitiveness for American businesses or restrict U.S. economic growth.” Those goals could be very difficult to achieve, according to Mongabay sources.

But even as the Trump administration remains undecided regarding Paris, U.S. monetary commitments to the agreement are already vanishing. Obama pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, but only delivered $1 billion before leaving office. The rest is gone for now. Some $2 million for the research-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been cut. Millions given to the UN for its climate administration offices in Bonn will likely also disappear.

“No one is saying they will step up and fill the gap,” says Argentine native Mariana Pauncio-Feldman, senior director of International Climate Cooperation for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). “That is a problem. And it will be a hot topic of discussion. For many countries, they need international support to reach their [carbon reduction] goals. We could be bracing ourselves for real [economic] challenges there.”

Enter China

There was no question, nor hesitancy, when I asked policymakers and activists who will fill the climate policy leadership gap: China.

“China is spending $360 billion on renewables — mostly solar, with some wind and hydro — by 2020,” says Brandon Wu, U.S. director of climate policy and campaigns for London-based ActionAid. “They have been on this path for awhile and are showing no sign of slowing up.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has restated his commitment to the Paris Agreement, and to a steady transition away from the coal-fired power plants that have left Chinese cities shrouded in smog. Sources stressed that China’s leadership and U.S. fossil fuel retrenchment could freeze America out of clean energy innovation and international markets that will likely cost domestic jobs and global credibility.

Flooding, tornadoes, large hail and other extreme weather associated with an intense mid-latitude cyclone killed 15 people in the central U.S. in early May 2017, and likely caused damage topping $1 billion, according to a preliminary insurance analysis quoted on the Weather Underground blog. Such extreme events are becoming increasingly more likely as the world heats up. Photo courtesy of NOAASwaths of forest destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Climate change is expected to make staggering, often unpredictable, changes to ecosystems in the 21st century as global warming impacts escalate. The Paris Agreement needs to prevent additional warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) if the world is to avoid catastrophic warming. Photo by Bob McMillan courtesy of FEMA

India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter, is also pledging a dramatic investment in renewable energy, while scaling back coal usage. The European Union remains fully behind the Paris Agreement, with Germany heading toward getting 50 percent of its energy from wind. Uruguay and Costa Rica have already nearly freed themselves from fossil-fuel reliance, while Norway and Sweden have promised to become carbon neutral by 2030 and 2045 respectively. Transnational corporations have made similar pledges, including Bank of America, Facebook, General Motors, Microsoft, VF Corporation, Starbucks, Walmart and Ikea, among dozens of others.

“International leadership on climate is more diffuse than ever before, and other countries, large and small, are stepping up to lead within and outside the negotiations,” says Caballero of WRI.

A variety of sources headed to Bonn note that, regardless of Trump’s federal actions, much of America is going its own way. U.S. cities and states are investing heavily in solar and wind power, electric public vehicles and LED street lighting. Coal burning for electricity is in rapid decline, as is the failing coal industry. Even as Trump proclaims a rebirth of coal, analysts wonder to whom the industry will sell its product. Meanwhile, the oil industry is trimming its long-term demand and profit forecasts due to the rapid development of electric cars.

The Brazos Wind Farm Fluvanna, Texas. Trump’s unbridled support of fossil fuels could cripple alternative energy development in the U.S., as China and the rest of the world pull ahead. Photo by Leaflet licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licensePhotovoltaic system with 19 Megawatts peak near Thüngen/Bavaria. The Trump administration is dedicating itself to coal, a 19th century technology; and oil, a 20th century technology; while the rest of the word is investing in cutting edge 21st century technology. Photo by OhWeh under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

“Thirty states have grown economically and reduced their emissions,” says Pauncio-Feldman at WWF. “The benefits to the U.S. economy by staying in the Paris Agreement is something we need to keep driving home. Delivering on the [Paris] targets means more jobs. We see this in other countries. We can show that U.S. leadership is not always national leadership.”

Alex Hanafi, a climate negotiator with the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington DC, says pulling out of the Paris Agreement will likely damage the U.S. far more than the global climate action movement. He sees irony in one particular aspect of Trump’s failure to lead:

“President Reagan used to say ‘trust but verify,’ and the U.S. has championed the concept of transparency in climate talks in a bipartisan way for years,” says Hanafi. “Trust and verify are at the heart of the Paris Agreement. If the U.S. pulls out, the transparency rules — which help determine if countries are meeting their pledges — are not likely to be as strong. If we’re not at the table, you don’t get to influence what’s on the table. That’s a key loss for the U.S.”

Justin Catanoso, a regular contributor to Mongabay, is a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Find him on Twitter,@jcatanoso.

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Trump has dismissed climate science as “a hoax” and repeatedly promised to “cancel” President Obama’s US commitment to the Paris Agreement, despite corporate pleas to respect the pact. If Trump pulls out, the U.S. will stand alone among nations — rejecting the scientific consensus on global warming and embracing climate change denial as an international policy. Photo courtesy of NASA